Commissioner Is Hoping Race Won't Be Issue

January 7, 2004|By Mike Lafferty, Sentinel Columnist

Nursing a cup of decaf at Cracker Barrel, Gwen Azama-Edwards is talking about what it is like to get scorched by her first political firestorm.

A recent news story had the freshman Daytona Beach city commissioner saying that Black College Reunion is heavily staffed with cops because "a lot of people who look like us" come to town -- "us" referring to black people.

Local cops are not happy, something Azama-Edwards is hearing from the chaplain of Daytona Beach's Police Department, who happens to be her husband.

For the record, Azama-Edwards, 55, said she was not talking about her personal view of police staffing but rather of a perception held by others.

It is no surprise that a Daytona Beach commissioner is getting grief about special events. It is, however, a minor political miracle that Azama-Edwards, the former city clerk, is in office to absorb this grief.

Here was a black Democrat running in a zone where 88 percent of the voters are white and Republicans dominate. Zone 4 voters live in country club enclaves such as Pelican Bay, Indigo Lakes and LPGA.

Think Jeb Bush running for mayor of Detroit.

In contrast, Azama-Edwards' opponent, Albert Glenn, was a demographic poster boy for Zone 4 -- white, retired and related by marriage to billionaire Jim France of the NASCAR family dynasty, whose famous track fell within Zone 4.

Against these odds, Azama-Edwards pulled off a stunning one-vote win that was the local equivalent of Truman besting Dewey.

But in winning the seat, Azama-Edwards also made history, giving blacks a commission majority in a city where whites outnumbered blacks by 2-to-1.

In some cities, it's a big deal when a majority black population finally elects a majority black city council.

Two months later, political scientists are still poring through history books to find another city in Florida where a white majority population has ever been run by a black majority city council.

Azama-Edwards gets credit for making history because the other three races won by black candidates were slam-dunks. Two of the zones had no white candidates. In the mayor's race, Yvonne Scarlett-Golden outspent Mike Shallow by nearly 5-to-1.

She feels gratitude for the opportunity, pride in her open-minded community and excitement about the chance to fix the city's problems.

But she worries that commission decisions will all flow through some kind of racial filter. People who might never have given a thought to the racial motivation of a white majority will wonder whether it influenced the black majority.

Already some have questioned the commission's seating arrangement during meetings, wondering why the three white members don't sit among the black members. (It's because the commission has always been seated by zone, and white commissioners hold zones 1, 2 and 3.)

Soon comes the hiring of a new city manager. Azama-Edwards is anticipating the buzz if he or she turns out to be black.

Maybe all that buzz is why the woman who made history is drinking decaf.